What exactly is contemporary dance in Canada? In Four at the Winch Quebec, four Montreal-based choreographers, commissioned by the Toronto Dance Theatre, show us four startlingly different answers to this question. In collaboration with the talented and diverse Toronto Dance Theatre company dancers, choreographers Estelle Clareton, Lina Cruz, Deborah Dunn and Jean-Sebastien Lourdais craft four unique worlds, all under the guise of contemporary dance. Four at the Winch Quebec, which bridges the gap between contemporary dance bastions Toronto and Montreal, runs from Feb. 23-March 3 at the Winchester Street Theatre.
To create Four at the Winch Quebec, each choreographer worked with Toronto Dance Theatre company dancers for five-weeks to develop their choreographic visions, and the result is a highly engaging, thoughtful, varied show, which reflects a wide range of physical expressions, and a snapshot of Canadian contemporary dance.
Dressed to impress in a full suit and dress shoes and armed with a winning smile, Peter Hessel opens the show by repeating the word ‘love’ to the audience over a dozen times. With each utterance Hessel’s tone and voice reveal something new to us about love, as his delivery transforms the word into everything from coy to intimate to exasperating. In Etudes sur l’amour /printemps the rest of the dancers, dressed in street clothes with red accents, ebb and flow into various formations, coupling and re-coupling with ease and lightness, as they express the multiple personalities of love in this premiere by Estelle Clareton. Part of a series of four studies on love inspired by the different seasons, Clareton shows us the light and playful side of contemporary dance.
In contrast to Clareton’s lightness, Jean-Sebastien Lourdrais’ dark, disturbing, and highly provocative premiere, Etrange, accentuates the range of expressive possibilities of this art form. Opening with a writhing body groaning in a square of light, Lourdais creates a visceral movement language, all his own. Dressed in brightly coloured swim trunks, pursing their lips, thrusting their pelvises while slowly collecting their own spit in their mouths, the dancers transform into both de-humanized and grotesque beings in this biting commentary on human sexuality. Lourdais’ choreography is highly original, showcasing incredible performances by Mairi Greig, Yuichiro Inoue and Naishi Wang.
In Deborah Dunn’s theatrical Men come, men go, we witness an entirely different approach to dance-making. Though it is popular these days to combine contemporary dance with some form of theatre, as with any collaboration between art forms, it must be done well. This means, always being mindful of the strengths and limitations of each art form and how they interact onstage. With a soundtrack of film excerpts from Apocalypse Now, costumes made up of various approximations of army fatigue, spoken text, and a fake gun onstage, Dunn’s Men Come, men go is an example of theatrical contemporary dance lacking the strengths of the art forms it draws on. Following a loose, fragmented narrative, the performers’ physicalizations of emotion and the Acocalypse Now voiceover seem to undermine each other, fostering confusion. Dunn’s Men Come, men go is a disjointed and overly dramatized premiere.
Lina Cruz highlights an experimental approach to contemporary dance full of choreographic risk-taking in her premiere Pop Out Your Apple And Enjoy The View, which closes the show. With seven dancers in striking androgynous costumes made up of black suit jackets, black bras and sunglasses, Cruz combines, opera signing, apple-eating, and a dramatic lift in a quirky inexplicable world of surprises that keeps audiences guessing till the very end.
If there was ever a doubt as to the dynamic range and choreographic possibilities of contemporary dance, Four at the Winch Quebec puts those doubts to rest. Dramatic, varied, and well produced, this show highlights the breadth and depth of this ever-expanding art form.
Four at the Winch Quebec: Feb. 23-25, 29 & Mar. 1-3 8:00 p.m./Feb. 26 2 p.m. (PWYC) at the Winchester Street Theatre: Tickets $26, $20 Students/Seniors/CADA members/Arts workers.
Visit www.tdt.org or call 416 967-1365 for tickets.
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